a narrator / a body
i went to the bookstore because the library had a many, many, many week wait for i who have never known men, and i suddenly needed to read it right this second or else. went in mostly blind and finished it in two evenings. my feelings are complicated. i loved it, but don’t know that i enjoyed it – maybe the other way around.
thirty-nine women and a teenage girl are held in an underground prison guarded by a rotating group of men. the girl, our nameless narrator, knows nothing of the outside world, and the older women can hardly remember their previous lives. none of them know where they’re being kept, why, or by whom.
it’s about loneliness and community, and the resentment that comes with both. it’s about women and society and men too a little bit. it’s mostly about, i think, our unquenchable thirst for context, for sense; it’s a meditation on getting over it.
… another question that will remain unanswered: i feel as though i am made of nothing else.
/
life feels different and also the same.
i think i’ve finally made peace with my job. of course i’d rather spend my time on more creative projects, but my work isn’t soul-sucking and it would pay well if i put in literally any additional effort. unfortunately this means i have to start networking, ugh.
i’m taking, let’s say, B- care of myself otherwise. food is a touchy subject again, which is so annoying at such an adult age, lol. i thought i grew out of it. it’s strange to override an impulse that you know would alleviate some pain or anxiety – telling yourself no like a dog.
it’s also super weird to write and talk about eating disorders as an adult. you never say outright what you did or do as part of your disorder – mostly to avoid triggering others, but i also think even the most unabashed of us carry a lot of shame. denying or revoking nutrition, such a basic need, fills you with a unique kind of guilt.
you end up talking in code: you’re weird with food, “behaviors”, bad body image day. you use words like “relapse” and “recovery” with no real language to describe the sisyphean task of arguing with your own brain.
the whole thing is so degrading, honestly. the amount of mental processing that goes into contemplating and justifying my caloric intake practically against my will is – AHHH. i don’t care! stop calculating!!
/
doppelganger was more helpful to me than any ED recovery lit could be. naomi klein points out the obvious politics of the body, the business of the body, the body as a domain of control.
… unlike so much else upon which we might like to have some sort of impact, the canvas of the self is compact and near enough that it feels like we might actually pull off some measure of control. Even though, as I have discovered, this, too, is a grand illusion.
at its most extreme, this self-as-canvas is a doubling: there is you, and the potential you who can only be reached through “self-denial and self-discipline” –
through self-negation.